$1000-$1200 Gaming PC

Edited: Changed the ram to OCZ, keeping the hard drive to one F3 and will add an SSD when they're cheaper, going with the 750W corsair

Hey guys, I'm a long time reader of everyone elses builds and I'm finally getting ready to do my own. Any help will be appreciated, I'm competent with computers, but have never built a system myself.

APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE: Waiting for black Friday, if there aren’t good deals on the parts I want, I’ll buy them that weekend anyway

BUDGET RANGE: 1000-1200 (flexible a little beyond this too)

SYSTEM USAGE FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT: SolidWorks and other similar programs, gaming, School work/ heavy internet usage, music. All pretty equally important. Games will be Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 as well as FPS such as CoD, Crysis, Team Fortress/HL engine). I’d like to be able to do Flight Simulator too, but I’ve never used it before so that’s just extra if possible. I won’t watch movies on this system, but I do watch internet videos of course (current system lags at full screen, its very old)

PARTS NOT REQUIRED: monitor, speakers, OS (Windows 7 64 bit)

PREFERRED WEBSITE(S) FOR PARTS: mainly newegg (flexible on this),also love amazon, but I don’t know how they are for buying computer parts COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: (USA)

OVERCLOCKING: Maybe(never done before, but would like to if its easy) SLI OR CROSSFIRE: Probably not

MONITOR RESOLUTION: (computer monitor at 1680x1050, and HDTV as second monitor at 1920x1080)

Sounds like a solid build. Go with the i7-920, 100%. Best performance for your money and very expandable over-clock capability with the right cooler. I recommend the Thermalright Ultra 120 extreme for cooler, best $60 you are going to spend on this rig. If you want to go with air, this is as cool as you are going to get. Its huge, but once its in there, great temps at even high OCs. Great value overall. As for GPU, the 5870 should be the best option here for you. This card goes toe to toe with my BFG GTX295 and it consumes much less power. See if you can find one of these in this crappy market. Also, go with the Corsair 750, or even higher, should you want to go 2-way crossx one day. Look for high continuous power. Best of luck...

Niklas, thanks for the suggestions, I'm changing the ram to the OCZ since its faster and cheaper. As for the motherboard, can anyone justify to me going with the p6t deluxe instead of the Asrock and paying about 100 more for it?

For power, I will go with the Corsair 750 as you guys suggested, and for video card I'll go with 5850 cus the 70 is way too expensive.

My last question is on hard drives. So the 2 options are an SSD with an F3 as storage (probably too expensive, but I could buy a single F3 and add the SSD later when they get cheaper), or two F3s in raid0. Can anyone give me some help and tell me the advantages of two F3s in raid0 over just a single one?

Niklas, thanks for the suggestions, I'm changing the ram to the OCZ since its faster and cheaper. As for the motherboard, can anyone justify to me going with the p6t deluxe instead of the Asrock and paying about 100 more for it?

For power, I will go with the Corsair 750 as you guys suggested, and for video card I'll go with 5850 cus the 70 is way too expensive.

My last question is on hard drives. So the 2 options are an SSD with an F3 as storage (probably too expensive, but I could buy a single F3 and add the SSD later when they get cheaper), or two F3s in raid0. Can anyone give me some help and tell me the advantages of two F3s in raid0 over just a single one?

Thanks for all the help so far

The p6t D is a better board, Not that the other would be bad but you get more bells and Whistles on the p6t and it runs a bit cooler.

The p6t would be A better OCing mobo, think of it like buying a car both will get you to point a and b some have air some dont, some have over drive some dont ect.

I would get the F3 and buy a SSD latter when there cheeper, then use the F3 for a storage drive. Raid-0 would help read writes speeds

Thanks for the suggestions, I went ahead and edited the original post and listed the things I changed at the beginning. The only question I have now is which brand of 5850 to go with, I dont know the differences. And is there anywhere that sells them for cheaper? $300 is a little steep and I'm already over budget a bit.

Niklas, thanks for the suggestions, I'm changing the ram to the OCZ since its faster and cheaper. As for the motherboard, can anyone justify to me going with the p6t deluxe instead of the Asrock and paying about 100 more for it?

For power, I will go with the Corsair 750 as you guys suggested, and for video card I'll go with 5850 cus the 70 is way too expensive.

My last question is on hard drives. So the 2 options are an SSD with an F3 as storage (probably too expensive, but I could buy a single F3 and add the SSD later when they get cheaper), or two F3s in raid0. Can anyone give me some help and tell me the advantages of two F3s in raid0 over just a single one?

Thanks for all the help so far

"As for the motherboard, can anyone justify to me going with the p6t deluxe instead of the Asrock and paying about 100 more for it?"

Let me switch out a couple of words in the statement to let you understand more clearly:

"As for the car, can anyone justify to me going with the BMW instead of the Honda and paying more for it?"

Its a brand name....just how a bmw is a BMW an asus is an ASUS and they make high quality stuff, its like the bmw of motherboards. They aren't at the top of the chain but are pretty high up there. Its high quality material, more bells and whistles and perks and etc...there are many variables, but newegg sells it for an extra 100 for a very good reason. Think about it, ususally people who buy custom parts from newegg do it for homebuilds, people who homebuild systems instead of buying them from dell usually know what they are doing with a few exeptions, since most people are pretty knowleagable on it then they would see that Asrock and Asus are the same and therefore would not buy the asus and newegg wouldn't sell it for 100bucks more if nobody bought it. But since this isn't the case, obviosly the asus is better since people still buy it and taking into account they mostly are pretty knowleable and have some expirience at least then newegg would sell it for more since it knows people buy

Hey guys, I just bought everything except the graphics card and optical drive (both are out of stock at the moment). I also replaced the case with a HAF 922 (it's only 60 bucks at amazon today).

Here's my problem, I'm torn between a 5850 and a 4890. The Sapphire 5850 is $310 ($360 for XFX for the warranty) and the XFX 4890 is $200 with free shipping. I'm not sure if that price difference is worth it, what do you guys think. Also, this weekend is 10% bing cashback, waiting for the out of stock 5850 to come in stock may mean missing out on that.

I want to stick with the HD 5850. The problem is availability. Is there any word on when it's going to be in stock? I can't put together this computer without the gpu since the ASUS mobo doesnt have on board video. I'm cool with not having my complete computer until whenever, but I do need to put it together before the return period ends, to make sure everything is working. My current computer has an extremely old card (GeForce 3 Ti 200) that probably wouldn't even fit in the slots.